Mark LaFlamme, 22, of Lewiston, on a charge of lying about his age. LaFlamme pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a life of telling the truth. He is 25 and must admit as much forevermore.

It’s an embarrassing thing to see in print, but there you have it. When you get gobbled up by the criminal justice system, your personal information goes on display in black and white. You’ve earned your place in the sun.

Not everybody likes the sun.

I remember the man who was walking in circles in front of the police department and chewing the nail of his pinkie. Lord knows how long he’d been out there. His mission: to ambush the reporter who carries a notebook in the back of his pants and a pen tucked behind an ear.

I arrived just after sundown and the guy was all over me. He looked like someone begging for change to support a dope habit. But he didn’t want the nickels and dimes from my pocket. He wanted to keep information from making a scribbled appearance in my notebook.

“They arrested me last night,” he said. “Domestic assault. Man, I didn’t do it. It was all a misunderstanding. My name goes in the paper, my life is done. I’ll lose my job. My family will disown me.”

A very passionate and likable guy. In the end, he pulled a wallet from his back pocket and offered me 50 bucks. He held it in a trembling hand, this cash for my integrity.

I could have used that 50 bucks. I believe I was living in that one-room dive at the time and I ate Ramen noodles every night for dinner.

The man’s name went into the daily police log and he contended with whatever consequence was wrought. Though it is my duty to compile the nightly list, the decision on who shows up there is entirely up to the booking sheets. I’ve always said that, should my mother come through town and get caught for swiping something from a pet store, her name would appear in the police log. Could happen. The woman really loves her cat.

If one name gets purposely omitted from the log, then a grave injustice has been served upon those who have made their appearance. If Joe Beer gets listed for disorderly conduct, then the head of a major corporation must get recorded for the assault on his neighbor.

There are the frequent fliers who appear in the arrest log almost weekly. I get the sense they don’t give a damn how many times their names grace the local section of the newspaper. Then there are those who get nailed only once, but in a life-crushing fashion.

Things got crazy back in the days of the prostitution stings. During those sweeps, a dozen men or more would get gobbled up on charges that they solicited undercover cops for sex. Most of these men had never been arrested. Many were married and had come from far-off towns for their Lewiston thrills.

One man bawled like a child as he begged me to keep his name out of the paper. Another came to the newsroom to plead his case with a top editor. The man was undergoing cancer treatment and had lost all his hair. He adored his girlfriend, he explained, but he felt himself grotesque and did not want to approach her for sex. Just that one time, he had come to Lewiston for gratification and that was when he was snared in the sting.

“It was a really sad story,” the editor recalled.

I had genuine sympathy for these people. Two sentences in the paper and their lives would be changed forever. These were people who envisioned their wives, children and neighbors reading about their lurid exploits in the daily rag. There was a priest, a probation officer, more than a few respected businessmen.

I imagined the amorous, agonized men sitting at breakfast tables across from their wives. Watching, sweating, waiting for their longtime spouses to turn to the local section of the paper. A sudden jerk of the newspaper. A gasp from across the eggs and pancakes …

A terrible image. But every name went into the paper and no doubt a few divorces resulted. No doubt a few careers died on the street corners of Lewiston.

I’ve been offered cash to leave a name out of the police log maybe three times. I’ve been offered violence a time or two. There was a woman charged with assaulting her live-in girlfriend who offered to “work things out” with me if I could show her consideration. I never found out what she had in mind. The name went into the paper as all the names of arrested people have gone in for decades.

Me, I would have no complaints if we decided to stop publishing local arrests this very day. It is a part of my job I take no joy in. It’s a mindless process and a tedious one. It’s grunt work and very rarely do surprises come from the daily booking sheets.

But I’m told the police log is one of the most widely read sections of the paper. People want to know what their neighbors are up to. They want to know when the boss’s kid runs afoul of the law and when their no-account brother-in-law has fallen off the wagon again.

There is an opinion among some that the police log is unfair in its nature, that it punishes suspected criminals before they have their days in court. Personally, I don’t feel strongly one way or another. I’m 22 years old. I have other things to worry about.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter.